


A Life of Near Misses

by objectlesson



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Ciel POV, D/s undertones, Dubious Consent, Hand & Finger Kink, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Power Exchange, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:26:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3278420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Ciel’s scars have been rendered by the hands of humanity, so it is not what Sebastian is which scares him. It is what <i>he</i> is, without Sebastian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Life of Near Misses

**Author's Note:**

> This story, like all of the other stories I've written about them (and like the show, actually) is all about power, the the exchange of power, and the never-ending question of who holds the power within their dynamic. Mostly I just really wanted an excuse to have Ciel resort to ordering Sebastian to do stuff to him. 
> 
> Note: ALL SEX WITH CHILDREN CIEL'S AGE IS RAPE, NON-CON, ABUSE, ETC. I do not ever ever ever ever condone this type of thing. Ciel is incapable of giving consent as an abused child, so every sex scene in any story I've ever written in this fandom is coerced and essentially non consensual. Read at your own risk knowing that just because this is a WORK OF FICTION about ANIME CHARACTERS, doesn't mean the dynamic therein is ok. 
> 
> Enjoy!

The shine of blood on marble like so many crushed cherries in snow still surges across Ciel’s mind as he wakes thrashing, sweat-sticky and winded in darkness. Fragments of the dream cling to him; he attempts to shake them off, but it is never something he can do easily. 

“Young master,” says a voice of coal and feathers. From the shadows Sebastian emerges, cast in radiant violet from Ciel’s own glowing eye and rustling like wings and the flicker of a tailcoat. It is only then, with his butler bending over him as pale and ever-watching as the moon, that Ciel can settle back into his sheets and release the panicked breath he has been holding. Sebastian blots out blood; he changes everything. 

“What are you doing here?” Ciel says, voice hoarse and unconvincingly performing irritation. 

“You called,” Sebastian answers.

“I did not,” Ciel snaps, though he is not certain. His eye burns acutely and he’s so profoundly relieved that Sebastian _is_ here, but he does not remember calling. Not consciously anyway, not intentionally, not while he was awake. 

The memory is three years old but invariably ripe. Blood on marble but not on his own bare feet, because he had been swept up into steel-certain arms, because he had been surrounded in sulfuric blackness, saved by the devil. Ciel’s nightmares often fail to include this, instead forever looping his own animal screams, the obscured horror of masked human eyes and a glinting blade held in endless suspended motion. In his nightmares, he is always calling. Hand outstretched and longing for anything, anyone. The agony reigns unrelenting until he wakes; that is always the way it goes.

Sebastian reaches out and with his index and middle fingers, brushes Ciel’s mussed hair from his forehead. They both squint in the brilliance of Ciel’s ignited contract seal, and if Ciel knew what love felt like, he might be able to identify the chaotic storm of feeling which lays tempered and thrumming above the pain he cannot swallow in his throat. 

“Perhaps not with your voice, young master,” Sebastian murmurs, letting Ciel’s bangs fall back into place as he stands. “But you did call. And if you call, I will come, no matter the circumstances.” 

Silence hangs between them for a moment, slowly spreading like a splatter of blood on marble. Ciel feels the pressure of it, something warm and alive expanding between his lungs, as he realizes that without Sebastian’s leashed potential, all that otherworldly power at his own child’s fingertips, he is nothing but a boy with nightmares. It frightens him. 

“Well. I didn’t _mean_ to. But now that you’re here, you can bring some hot milk. And fix the sheets, they’re somehow a mess again,” he says, kicking free of the tangle of silk he’s confined to, distantly confused by the new heat which rises to his cheeks as Sebastian watches him in a way that is not sinister, but also not human. 

All Ciel’s scars have been rendered by the hands of humanity, so it is not what Sebastian is which scares him. It is what _he_ is, without Sebastian. 

\---

It happens again, more often than Ciel would prefer to think about. And always, Sebastian comes, appearing sudden and terrible like a flame at the wick of a candle. And always, Ciel is overcome with relief, though he would never admit so in the light. 

Like clockwork, Ciel will cry out in his dream and sometimes awake with a raw throat, other times with the seal on his eye flashing so bright it illuminates the room in all its dark edges and secret shadows. Regardless, Sebastian surges in like the tide, there to smooth the ripples from Ciel’s sleep. 

Sometimes he stays because Ciel asks him to, sitting on the chair beside the bed knitting or polishing silverware. Ciel will be lulled to sleep by the soft, comforting click of needles or knives, of Sebastian’s gloved hands completing the mundane tasks he must, but with such elegance and competence they seem beautiful, important. Ciel closes his eyes and listens, imagining Sebastian is creating universes, tearing them down. Then, he eventually sleeps. 

One night he starts awake and even as the dream fades and his room materializes, he still feels like he can’t breathe. He sucks in desperate mouthfuls of air only to have them go nowhere, staying stuck and aching as he tears weakly at the topmost buttons of his nightshirt. Then, Sebastian is upon him, kneeling over his windmilling frame on the bed, hands coming to his throat like two doves from the beak of a raven. 

“Young master, allow me,” he says, and in seconds he has deftly unbuttoned the shirt and tossed it to the side, leaving Ciel gasping and naked like something crucified in the moonlight. Sebastian smooths him out, moving as effortlessly as smoke, shifting to curl up behind Ciel and hold him in place while the rest of the world reels about them. 

Ciel feels like he should be mortified, and he is, but it’s a strange breed of mortification. One that seems as if it belongs to a different world. Ciel’s daylight self, furious and proud, would color deeply at the mere thought of laying in Sebastian’s arms in nothing but his own skin. He would be horrified and shamed by the twist of desire the thought would inevitably strike up in his gut. But here, in the darkness and in the dissipating clutches of a nightmare, he lays still, stunned by his willingness to accept that this is what Sebastian does to him when it’s the witching hour and he has nothing else to guide himself home by. 

Sebastian holds him tightly, pinned to his chest, one broad palm rubbing up the left side of his ribcage and sternum as if trying to still the rabbit-quick madness of his sick heart. “My young master,” he murmurs into Ciel’s hair, lips soft against the shell of his ear. Ciel hisses, and bends, and does not try and stop himself. “We must do something about this habit of yours. Restful sleep is important to your health.” 

Ciel shivers, then arches into Sebastian’s solidity. He feels like he could sleep through the night if it were like this, if he could stay like this. If he knew the way he knows that the sun rises and sets every day that Sebastian is _his_ , will stay with him until enough blood has spilled that his damnation is complete. “It is not a _habit_ ,” he snaps, not wanting to be condescended to. He swallows thickly, holding onto Sebastian’s arm with two tremulous, flexing hands. “It is just an inconvenient symptom. It will pass.” 

“I see,” Sebastian whispers, lips brushing down Ciel’s cheek, to his chin, and up again to pause ever so briefly at the corner of his mouth. Ciel holds his breath, hoping with a wild, sudden longing that Sebastian will kiss him, bite him, choke him, do _anything_. His heart starts up again beneath Sebastian’s palm, and with that, Sebastian moves away with low hiss of breath. 

“Wait,” Ciel says, his voice sounding so young that it makes him wince with nausea. The single word wavers in the dark, and Sebastian stops. “Perhaps...could you. Will you stay here?” Ciel rarely asks things of Sebastian when he can demand them. The question mark sounds absurd tacked onto the end of his statement, so he stumbles over it and attempts to recover his composure.“I mean stay _here_. Not in the chair. But here. While I sleep.” 

Sebastian, reclined on the bed beside Ciel like a whole horizon line in all his peaks and angles, stays silent and unreadable for a moment. Ciel tries to make out his expression in the dark, but Sebastian is very good at concealing himself when he wants to, and there is nothing in his slanted brows and soft mouth for Ciel to latch onto and examine. Finally, he says, “Very well. Allow me to remove my shoes. And waistcoat, to prevent it from becoming wrinkled.” 

Ciel flushes terribly, shaking his hair onto his brow to hide beneath. He almost feels like Sebastian is _resisting_ his orders, questioning their validity, his motivation, but it’s nearly impossible for him to parse out what comes from his own insecurity at allowing someone to catch even glimpses of his vulnerability, from what the truth of Sebastian’s interior might be. 

Ciel feels very aware of his size, small and frail before the immensity of Sebastian and all of hell behind him, bearing down upon white sheets. In this moment he loathes his own humanity, and longs for the dark, for deliverance. He wants all of humanity to suffer as he did and does, and he wants Sebastian, and these things seem twined together like the two rings on his slender hand.

“If you must,” he tells Sebastian before yawning. His butler’s eyes flash scarlet in the night and Ciel’s insides clench before the flicker of fire disappears, leaving him to wonder if it had ever been there at all. The bed creaks as Sebastian falls into place beside him, tucking the sheet up and over Ciel so that their bodies are separated by a layer of silk. This is not exactly what Ciel wants, but he will take it. 

\---

Ciel begins to notice with more certainty that there are orders which make Sebastian uncomfortable, make the demon inside him shine through the cracks of his imperfect disguise like fire. By daylight, Ciel is himself. Cold and impertinent, fiercely disapproving of Sebastian’s coddling, even if it’s in jest. But once night falls, everything feels different.

By moonlight Sebastian’s hands wander, through Ciel’s hair and across his back, tracing an idle filigree over his skin as Ciel drops in and out of drowsiness. Ciel does not only allow Sebastian these furtive touches, he encourages them, silently begs for them. Though he has not articulated it even in the safety of his own mind, within his deepest recesses he knows that he’s trying to _push_ Sebastian until Sebastian cannot be pushed any further, until something breaks and the demon beneath the mask takes over. At night he orders Sebastian’s proximity, bed time stories, back rubs, and often thinks of ordering more. However, what he wants most is for Sebastian to realize what he is doing and close the gap on his own accord, step over the divide and consume them both in darkness. 

It saves Ciel the responsibility of having to imagine what exactly it is he wants from Sebastian. He knows he wants anything, even everything, but he can rest passive in the sea of that unnamed want as long is Sebastian is the one taking from him. So he pushes and pushes further still, until Sebastian’s eyes become molten garnet and his palm trembles and stills on Ciel’s cheek, and the whole planet ceases its orbit to look upon the one inch of space between their lips, and wonders. 

Ciel holds his breath, closes his eyes, feels breakable in the tempered rage of Sebastian’s grip. He waits for something to fracture, but it never does. Sebastian is very good at practicing restraint, just at is he very good at everything else, and always Ciel is left with shuddering breath and an excess of heat building in his abdomen like a storm. “Young master,” Sebastian whispers, face cloaked in shadow and the down sweep of his inky hair. “I must again remind you I am here to help you rest.” 

And Ciel can only battle sleep for so long. He is a child and this game exhausts him, and of course it’s true that Sebastian is here now because if he isn’t, Ciel will call him, and then he will be. It is saving them both the shame of ending up here each night, and Ciel has grown complacent with the comfort of having hell by his side, resisting him, but only just. The night stretches on and Ciel’s eyes grow heavy, and eventually he will drift off under Sebastian’s gaze, Sebastian’s heavy wings.

 

 

He will dream, sometimes, and there is still blood. But it is by his own hand guided by Sebastian’s instead of his own blood spilling forth from dying lips. In his dreams he struggles to climb atop a mountain of bodies, wracking and staggering until reaches the pinnacle and falls heaving into Sebastian’s outstretched arms. _You have done it, my lord,_ says a voice in his ear as he’s lifted. _You can rest now_. 

\---

It eventually becomes too much to bear, too long to wait. Ciel is impatient and his skin is always crawling with want and with loneliness, with hunger and doubt. He wonders if Sebastian’s will has not broken because they do not want the same thing, but it seems unlikely as they are bound together eternally, a child to a demon. _He_ cannot be the one who is more corrupted. He cannot be the one who is more depraved. 

The sun disappears, leaving the sky burnt and orange and empty before the night sweeps in with her salve. The things which keep him silent drop into nothingness, and Ciel stands before Sebastian in his room, arms crossed and mind made. 

Before Sebastian can undress him for bed, Ciel takes a deep and staggering breath and orders, “Sebastian. Kiss me.” His eye flashes behind the patch, and he notices Sebastian’s marked hand flex involuntarily as if it burns. 

He has never seen Sebastian look the way he looks right now. Ciel does not know if his butler can experience pain, but it is the closest word he can think of to describe the hardened planes of his face, the part of his mouth, the draw of his brows. _Pained_. Ciel doesn’t know why, doesn’t understand, and terror blooms in him like smoke. “Did you hear me?” He asks, barking, head tilted to he can look Sebastian firmly in the eye. 

“Young master,” Sebastian murmurs, sinking down to his knee on one solitary motion so graceful it looks like a sigh. He takes Ciel’s hand between his own, before bringing it to his cheek. “You do not know what you ask.” 

It infuriates Ciel so he rips his hand away, jaw dropping indignantly. “Do _not_ patronize me. Stand.” 

Sebastian rises again, and it is only then that Ciel notices the tremor in his hands, the terrible reptilian pupils burning in a sea of unearthly red, beautiful and inhuman. Sebastian’s body sings with the agony of restraint. 

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Ciel hisses. “Silly, stupid demon, I--”

Sebastian steps forward, and places a single long, gloved finger over Ciel’s lips. There is heat and shadow radiating from him, something vast and flickering and not of this world. Ciel’s breath comes in great huffs as he works to save himself from inhaling that darkness until it fills him, rips him asunder. “Or you, the silly, stupid child, thinking you want things you cannot possibly understand. How do you know I could keep from devouring your soul as I devour the rest of you? Is that a risk you are willing to take?” Sebastian looms over him, vast and black and beautiful, filling the whole room the scent of sulfur and anguish. 

Ciel’s hands move beyond his own will to fist in Sebastian’s waistcoat. “I am willing to take any risk” he hisses, eyes hardened into blue glass, jaw set tight with fury. “I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve what I want, Sebastian, and you’ll help me. You will remain by my side. You’ll stay there always,” he sputters, unsure now if he’s talking about this moment, or every moment from here until damnation. The whole of Ciel’s brief and battered history has taught him that humans lie and humans abandon, but Sebastian. Sebastian does not lie, and Sebastian will never leave. “Always,” he repeats, through his teeth. “Now kiss me.”

Sebastian’s face softens, head cocking as he looks upon Ciel like he is the rarest work of art. 

“Yes, my lord,” he says, leaning in to press his lips chastely against Ciel’s brow.

“No,” Ciel mumbles, twisting away from condescension, reaching up to tangle his hand in the slickness of Sebastian’s hair. He forces Sebastian down, not even caring what a pathetic picture he makes, what a spoiled child. “No,” he says again, and Sebastian’s gaze burns into him with such intensity and proximity he feels as if he could catch fire, as if he could collapse. 

Sebastian brushes their lips together, for the briefest of seconds. Just skin sliding against skin, and it is not enough and Ciel is mad with want and frustration and he may be a child but he knows what he wants, he _knows_. So he makes a noise, a plaintive whine against Sebastian’s open lips, and then it is too much, and the levee breaks. Ciel crushes their mouths together, nails raking down Sebastian’s bent back, pulling him earthward, into himself, anything. 

He is suddenly engulfed, pulled beneath the tide of hell as Sebastian lifts him easily and holds him fast, hooking his thumb into Ciel’s swollen mouth so he force it open can lick the inside, suck on his tongue. Ciel cannot breathe, and he does not care. 

“I could shatter you,” Sebastian prays into their rain of wet, graceless kisses. “I could, and I will, if it is what you wish, you terrible, foolish young thing,” he says mindlessly, mouthing over Ciel’s throat, his cheeks, eyelids. “I will.” 

“You wont,” Ciel manages, bucking his hips in clumsy surges against Sebastian’s flat stomach, wild and dizzy with the slick madness of their kissing. This is what he wanted, this is the hell he chose. He palms up Sebastian’s neck, sliding small, shaking hands beneath his starched collar to touch skin soft and fever-hot. “Because you need me whole.”

“My lord,” Sebastian murmurs as he dips him down onto the bed, perfect fingers undressing him as easily as breathing. Then, “Ciel,” almost a whisper it is so small and secret, into the inside of a bare pubescent thigh. Ciel shuts his eyes and arches into slick heat, allowing the solitary syllable of his name to wash over him, ceding to the thing he is incomplete without. 

\---

Ciel does not dream that night, nor upon the nights which follow. He begins to sleep the way children are supposed to sleep, as safely and soundly as the dead, tucked into the arms of the devil. It is an unexpected symptom, though one he hopes will endure. 

Though the sun witnesses no changes, the moon turns her back in shame each night as Ciel stretches and twists beneath Sebastian as if he were waxing and waning himself. Though Ciel often wakes bruised and aching, Sebastian has yet to cross the line between tasting a soul, and taking it. In fact, Ciel learns that Sebastian is infuriatingly patient and can do nothing but kiss him for what seems like hours, but that once he’s inside him, he loses control and becomes animal, frightening, transcendent. He also learns that his own body is built to take Sebastian in every way, is a vessel for the whole of hell, and a sick, filthy part of him languishes in this discovery. 

One night they lay twined, Ciel sweat-damp and mewling beneath Sebastian’s insistent, hungry mouth. He wraps his legs around Sebastian’s back and hooks his ankles, rocking lazily against him even though he has long since come, emptied himself out so that he is nothing but a husk, a cracked shell of boy for a demon to crawl inside and make a home out of. Still, Sebastian kisses him, murmuring different versions of his name in different dead dialects and ancient tongues against sticky skin.

“Sebastian,” Ciel winces, twisting into the sharp drag of teeth. “What--” he gasps, rolling his spine, one hand tangled fitfully at the base of Sebastian’s skill, “What is your opinion of humanity?” 

Sebastian hums, licking slowly and wetly beneath the boyish jut of Ciel’s ribcage. “I find humanity,” he answers, sweeping up to Ciel’s tender throat into which he sucks a mark, “Exquisitely beautiful.” 

If it were daylight, Ciel would roll his eyes, flush deep with indignant embarrassment. But it is not daylight, and no one can see him, not even Sebastian whose face is buried against his pulse, so instead he smiles and lets his eyes slide closed. “No, not _me_ you fool. But humanity. As a race. As a whole.” 

Releasing Ciel’s frail windpipe from between his teeth, Sebastian emerges, strands of his hair sticking to damp, pink cheeks. It makes Ciel feel as if he is an entire flock of birds which flutter and preen and seethe until they take off all at once in a flurry of black wings, startled into flight by the inhuman scarlet shine to Sebastian’s gaze. It stuns him to know he can do this, that he has the power to make a demon’s exterior crack and flicker, that _he_ can make blood rise to the pale face of the devil. 

“Humanity as a whole is a tragic, mysterious thing. You lie to each other and murder one another, but write books about demons to explain the self-inflicted wickedness in your world. You love to hurt others but hate to be hurt, and you destroy things around you without learning how to rebuild them, to grow. Such is humanity, and for centuries I was disgusted. You are wretched, and alone,” Sebastian explains, gently mouthing over Ciel’s jaw and chin, bitter words between tender kisses.

“Yet here you are,” Ciel says to the night, hands carding fondly through his butler’s hair. This is what Sebastian does to him, this is the Earl of Phantomhive according to the moon. 

“Yes. And furthermore, here _you_ are. A liar and a murderer, and quite wretched,” Sebastian says, parting Ciel’s bitten lips with black-tipped fingers, pushing inside to count teeth, to stroke the slick insides of his cheeks, to push deeper still into his throat, making him sputter and choke if only so he can kiss him to silence once again. 

“But,” Ciel’s voice scrapes out as he wrenches away from Sebastian’s mouth to gasp. “Not alone.”

“No,” Sebastian agrees, covering the pearl in the bed with the whole of the sea, blotting out bloodstains on marble floors with an eternal stretch of black feathers. “Never again alone.”


End file.
